They’re cheap – as low as $1 – and don’t require a lot of fiddling to get running.

Their use can help if your page is struggling to get views and engagement.

Boosted Facebook posts are great for reaching new audiences, too.

The “Friends of Friends” gets the post in front of anyone associated with your page’s followers.

The FB platform includes analytics to track your boosted post’s performance, too. This way you can figure which one worked best and either fund it once it’s run its course. Or, copy it and run it again.

Take a moment to go through the Facebook ad policies for a complete breakdown. Otherwise, just keep in mind you’re advertising to your audience and a billion people – you want it professional.

We recommend following some of your best competitors seeing how they use the platform. This will give excellent data and understanding of what (and what doesn’t) work.

Don’t copy competitors but do learn from their efforts to build inspiration.

How to Create Your First Facebook Boosted Post: Step-by-Step

Finally, the good part of how to create Facebook boosted posts.

This will go fast because it’s seriously easy.

Create a Post, Add Content, and the URL

Head over to your Facebook business page.

Write a captivating description (emoji are fine)

Paste your site’s URL

This content could include one of your latest posts, a valuable resource, or one of your most popular items.

Facebook will automatically pull the post’s image and title.

Delete the URL from the description after it’s done this to keep it clean.

You may also want to edit the title before it goes live.

Click the post’s title until you have editing features

Trim or touch-up the title if the original wasn’t so exciting

Don’t depart too far from the original title, though, as it may lean it too heavily clickbait.

Click ‘Share Now’ and your post is live.

Promote the Facebook Post

Click the ‘Boost Post’ located on the bottom-right of the post’s box.

The next screen will provide a list of features and configurations for boosting the post.

Choose the ‘Objective‘ using the ‘Change’ button under the Objective tab.

We recommend setting this to ‘Website Visits’ for this first attempt.

Select the ‘Post Button‘ from its drop-down.

The ‘Learn More’ is the usual default and good to use when starting off. You may want ‘no button’ to remove distractions.

Play around with these options later when you’re comfortable boosting Facebook posts.

Set the ‘Audience‘ to ‘People who like your Page’ for our experiment.

Note: You’ll likely want to set the location to your home country otherwise you may find the post flooded by parties having no real interest in your offer. There’s a lot of fake accounts on the network that’ll use up your budget without any true interaction. Think like a business, where you’d promote to your intended audience.

This also gives you an option to promote the post via Messenger and Instagram. Uncheck these for our experiment.

Set the following in ‘Budget and Duration‘:

Total budget: $1

Duration: 1 day

You’ll see the ‘estimated people reached’ scaled as you change these options. This small investment is fine now for learning purposes.

Don’t worry about the tracking pixel, for now, if you haven’t set it up. Though, we recommend you do so later if you see yourself using FB boosted posts after this exercise.

Select the ‘payment method‘ and click the ‘Boost Now‘ button.

Congratulations!

You’ve created your first Facebook boosted post!

Your post will go under review but this won’t take long before it runs.

The Facebook Boost Cost: How Much Should I Spend?

That’s up to you but I say $1 to test the feature when you’re starting.

But, if you have a few extra bucks then $5 would show a good return while keeping the budget tight.

You can always increase spending later.

Consider this:

Set the audience

Set the time to 24-hours

Set the budget to $1

Run the campaign

Did it show promising returns? If so, add a few more dollars to the boosted post.

Did it fail to do what you want? If so, move on to other projects.

There’s always something to learn from your boosted FB posts.

I recommend keeping a swipe file or log of our campaigns. Leverage this data with some Facebook content ideas and you’ll build-out a great collection of what works.

Facebook Boosted Post Best Practices and Tips

You want to see a return on investment even if the boosted post only cost $1.

Use the following best practices and tips to make it more effective:

Target – Learn by doing have set the post to target your audience. Then, try a similar post targeting friends of followers. Finally, expand using targeted audience built through your site data and market knowledge. You’ll find a “sweet spot” with what boosted types work best.

Maturity – Boosting the moment you post won’t help you understand if it were already effective. Give it time to see if the post gets traction. This gives it a ‘bump’ once it starts slowing down in engagement. And, also provides data about what’s effective without needing the boosting.

Timing – AdEspresso says the best time to post on FB is Sunday/9AM for the best engagement or later into the week around 3 PM for the most clicks. Try posting at these times but swing around the following week to boost it once it’s matured for 7 days.

Scaling – The $1 base investment will get things rolling but don’t spend any extra just yet. Let the boosted post run its course including a bit of A/B testing. Then, come back and try incremental funding like $5, $10, or $20 for each pop. Don’t throw a huge chunk of change on something you aren’t sure about, basically.